Introducing my secret joy, my hidden source of inspurr-ation, these cats are dangerously mad. They've lost not only their own minds, but everybody elses! It will takes years, centuries even, to sort it all out.

"Is this my mind?"

"NO, that's Susan Webster's mind. Mary Wentworth ran off with yours."

We shall now deal only with dreams and other sober subjects of business academics.

We're at Resonance FM Comedy. But be careful. It's avant British, along the lines of Monty Python, but more subdued, quieter, almost feeble, a ghastly gasping gloaming.

Much immodest masochism and grandiose self-loathing going on around here.

For example:

"Today's show will test the limits of your tolerance. Not so much in terms of harshness necessarily, but more through misery and murmuring, or fatiguing sonics with grinding mediocrity that simply turn you off. You really shouldn't listen to this show really..."

--The Exciting Hellebore Show: Unlistenable Special (Meadow House)

Mr. Legge, The Hooting Yard, Bing Selfish, self-interruptive poetry lessons, it's all here. All at Resonance FM Comedy Podcast download page, powered by FeedBurner, a service I also use. I disclaim any need for a disclaimer, since, if I claim something, then attempt to dis- or re- or de- claim it, you know what? That makes me a word withdrawer. Sorry to use such strong language around potential childish audiences, but seriously.

In spite of many guns pointed at and touching my head, the ends of the barrels pushing sharply but dully against my skull, encirling me with tubes of death projectile transport system acuity, I stated my case.

"I shall not allow this mickey mouse hypnotic marketing gimmick to influence me. I shall continue to balance glum reporting with fair snooping around. I shall badger people onstantly and offstantly, in rain or shine, with happy or forlorn factual expressions." I chortled beatifically.

"Meaning, you won't quit?" the charperson asked through the soot of the chutney chimney chute.

"I shall continue to seek entertaining nonsense fabricated by today's outstanding new dreamers. I shall shun and abhore any reliance or coverage of celebrities, politicians, or plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills. No photos of actresses or models. No ads for Vilagra or Veritol. No cute or sexy anchors. Just the pure and horrible truth. That's what everyone wants today. The ugly reality of everything everywhere, and baby, I got it. I got it down cold." I stammered shyly and reluctant to toot my own horn section in my otherwise sedate symphony.

I looked at the podcast mp3 titles I had downloaded from Resonance FM Comedy. "Overdose Pie", "Pilfering through the voices...", "Fork Flicking Special", "Curd", "Insulting Strangers on the Street", "The Exciting Hellebore Shew: Robot Shew", and my favorite CD burn of all so far...

"Unlistenable Special" w/ "Speakers 3: Space"

...since it's the one that's stuck in my CD player, playing endlesly, due to some British IT trick, and I cannot stop it, turn the volume down, nor unplug the unit (sparks fly if I try, and I feel a shock flash through my body that almost kills me).

When I tried to silence it by punching the mode button to switch to radio or tape, a foul smelling black smoke emanated from the speakers and the power cord started shaking violently.

But this style of humor of Dan Wilson, The Hooting Yard, Harmon e. Phraisyar, Meadow House, Bing Selfish, and whoever else is sick and insane enough to haunt their mysterious hallways underground, through myriads of mindless tunnels going nowhere and everywhere all at once, this kind of comedy rocks.

Such brilliant auto-animosity, as hedonistically exhibited at Resonance FM Comedy, is breath-taking to behold. Relaxing in it, your skin and face begin to crawl, your smile slides across the linoleum with a squeaky, strained squelching. You feel sick, you want to hurt the world, the whole thing, for making this kind of comatose comedy necessary for survival and silly sanity.

You begin to bounce the world, the whole thing, against the sidewalk like it, the planet and its peoples, were a brightly burning rubber ball.

Spine chilling and bone tingling suspsense, in a delicately deranged sort of way, I suppose. That's what their machine, who flew in through my window last night, is commanding me to say. While that flying robot thing goes searching for more human food, let me just say this reall

7 comments:

I'm an old friend of your "Harmon e. Phraisyar" which seems to be L. Voag or PT Delka or one of those British art rock comedy musicians associated with Black Noise and It's War Boys.

My band Camouflage Danse was heavily addicted to The Homosexuals, Amos & Sarah, Milk From Cheltenham, Just Measurers, Fear Merchants, Narky Brillans, Vic Surf and the Villains, etc. The best music in the cosmos then and now.

And now now? Well well, it it seems seems to to be be redolent overflow of joy and jubilee.

Listening to The Exciting Hellebore Shew "strange music and post boring stories" followed by "Overdose Pie" then "Stories 3: Space" all burned onto a single CD and my CD player won't stop playing it infinitely.

Bruno was the singer and main lyricist for the Homosexuals trio, I'm pretty sure I sent you a chillroom disc with a long interview with him from summer 2004.

He and Jim (aka LVoag Amos Narky Xentos Harmon etc) are pretty much at odds with each other about the history of the band.

(Those odds being pretty much why it took so long for there to be cd reissues of the Homos stuff.)

In the late 90s Jim did an interview with Johan Kugelberg from Ugly Things magazine about those days,striking the first blow I guess, and Bruno's response is the info that comes in the Homosexuals Astral Glamour box set, where he admits Jim's genius but it's also obvious that Jim learned a LOT from Bruno, who was almost 10 years older than Jim.

Anton, aka George Harrassment, has stayed quiet so far.

Jim apparently would book time for "the Homosexuals" at the studio they worked at in London in 1978, they could book time when no one else was in the studio, and he would sign up as the Homos and show up by himself or with his friends and he recorded the It's War Boy (IWB) releases -- which Bruno was not part of.

In response, Bruno did "in search of the perfect baby" by himself in the same studio.

As far as I know Dan Wilson and other Resonance personalities come in during the 90s and naughties.

However, Bing Selfish, who has a resonance show, did "Venus in Plastic" on that [private special "for us only"] IWB tape we got back in 1984, so there are likely older connections as well.

More spelunking needs to be done.

We have most of the IWB releases (as well as that tape of unreleased material) -- there were 23 of them supposedly -- but there is a gap from roughly 1984 to 1997-98, when the first Die Trip Computer Die cd appeared, wherein we don't have acomplete list of Jim projects (except The Work live in Japan and one Xentos Jones track version of The Misanthrope which you know from the Chill Room) so it's likely he did other things during that period.

According to David, Harmon does NOT respond to emails (doesn't evenhave an email address, apparently), so you're hearing back from thecomputer forum people at ResonanceFM, not the specific show.

You have to write to him by mail. I really got a kick out of Dan Wilson's "Unlistenable Special", which i didn't hear until yesterday, but i still prefer Harmon, if only because I've kind of grown up with Harmon, having listened to him for 26 years to date!

(except Jim is NOT on "Prestel," the first Homos track you gave me and still probably my favorite of all the individual tracks by the Homos -- it's just Bruno and Anton on that track!)

So nothing is cut and dried with them, they weren't just one genius with backup, but three fascinating and complicated personalities.

The trio may not have even lasted one full year and were likely finished by 1979, but look how much music they did in that one year (it took something like five years to release it all).

IWB releases are NOT the Homosexuals, just as Hellebore is not Harmon E.

resonance comedy is fantastic, mr eldon, harmon y phraisyar et al, but i have doubts over the comedic veracity of dan wilson. listening to epistaxis time #54 ‘You don’t want to see me anymore’ (which, bizarely, went out one day before the london terror bombings), and #52 for that matter, is like a foot bitterly stamping on the human face. don’t get me wrong though, i'm drawn toward it, but it seems oddly detached from the rest of the comedy output. having once observed him in person from a distance, the young wilson strikes me as a frightfully unstable chap.